


Stone Number One

by Mixolydian320



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Love, Episode Tag, Episode: s11e22 We Happy Few, Gen, Hallucifer, Hell Trauma, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-10
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-08-07 20:46:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7729123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mixolydian320/pseuds/Mixolydian320
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sam suddenly realized that his own hands were twisted together, his right thumb digging into his left palm. He let go. Scrubbed a hand over his mouth. He was not going to do this. He was not going to let himself be taken back to that place he’d left behind years ago, when he had spent his days in a hallucinatory haze, and Lucifer had been waiting around every corner. "</p>
<p>It's one thing to keep your enemies close, but sharing a bunker with the being who once tormented him is starting to take its toll on Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stone Number One

Angels didn’t leave behind a scent—not like demons, who stank faintly of Sulphur—but Sam swore his recently vacated room reeked of something. Ash, maybe. Something bitter and potent. It was like breathing in smoke, and his lungs couldn’t handle it, so instead they seized up inside him, refusing to function at all. A burning sensation tore through his chest, and by the time he realized what was happening, the panic attack had already taken over. He felt Lucifer’s lingering presence in this room— _his_ room—like sweat slick on his skin, a filthy layer that coated everything. He saw Lucifer reclining on his bed, saw him bent over the desk, saw him touching the books piled there, intrusive fingers inviting themselves to what they were not welcome to. He couldn’t quite picture him as Cas, as he was now; Lucifer had worn many faces in the cage . . .

His breathlessness swelled inside him like a fire that didn’t require oxygen, burning and suffocating him until it all became too much, and he moved without thinking, lashing out at the pile of books on the desk. The Lucifer that was stroking their spines disappeared as the books hit the floor.

There was still a Lucifer smirking at him from the bed, arms crossed behind his head, one leg propped nonchalantly against the other. Sam took a step towards this vision, or hallucination, or whatever the hell it was, but he had hardly done so when he felt the press of fingers curling over his shoulder.

He reacted out of instinct, both the natural inclinations of panic and a lifetime of training kicking in at once. When he realized he’d just thrown his brother against the wall, it was only after Dean had ducked to avoid a swift jab to the carotid. 

Dean swore loudly, holding up his hands, palms out, in what was meant to be a placating gesture. “You want to take it easy there, Rambo?”

Sam’s chest still heaved, fruitlessly trying to suck in the air it needed to keep its host alive, and his heart pounded furiously, but his knees got the message first and nearly buckled in relief.

“Dean,” he gasped, allowing himself to double over for just a moment, hands on his knees, while he waited for his body to get the message that it wasn’t in danger. After another moment, the iron grip on his lungs loosened a fraction of a degree, and he pushed himself into a standing position again before Dean asked him what was wrong. Although considering he’d just flung his brother into the wall, they had probably passed the point where Sam could reasonably pretend that nothing had happened.

Dean was rubbing the back of his head almost absentmindedly, as if he barely realized it hurt, and frowning at Sam. “I guess there’s no point asking if you’re alright?”

 Sam sank back against the opposite wall; standing upright suddenly seemed an enormous effort. “I’m fine.” He was pleased to hear that he almost sounded it.

Dean snorted. “Yeah, ‘cause usually when I walk into a room, you put me through the friggin’ wall.”

Sam tried to indicate that he didn’t want to talk about it with a warning look, which apparently wasn’t sufficiently withering, because Dean took a step forward into the room, his hands braced in front of him, as if Sam might start swinging again.

“Look, I know this ain’t easy on you. Him being here.”

Sam suddenly realized that his own hands were twisted together, his right thumb digging into his left palm. He let go. Scrubbed a hand over his mouth. He was not going to do this. He was not going to let himself be taken back to that place he’d left behind years ago, when he had spent his days in a hallucinatory haze, and Lucifer had been waiting around every corner. His brain felt scattered, and maybe it was exhaustion or maybe it was something else, but whatever it was, it felt too much like it did back then, after the wall went down. He never wanted to return there, when everything had been scattered and disjointed and confused, and he had been steadily losing his grip on everything, and then Bobby was gone, and then Dean, and Sam had lost his grip on a whole lot more.

“But he can’t hurt you anymore,” Dean was saying, and Sam jumped when he felt a hand seize his shoulder again. “Not with me here. Not with God here.”

Sam nodded, blowing out a jittery breath, forcing an unconvincing laugh along with it. Dean didn’t look any less concerned, but the death-grip he had on Sam’s shoulder loosened. He concentrated hard on the hand on his shoulder like an anchor. Stone number one. He didn’t want to think what he’d do if he ever lost Dean again, how the world might just tilt sideways and never right itself, leaving him to slip off the edge of everything again.

Dean was right; this time was different. Lucifer couldn’t touch him. Rationally, Sam knew this, knew that with God under their roof Lucifer was about as a big a threat to him as a field mouse. It was just that, when Sam looked at him, he still saw a rat—grotesque and vicious. “I know. I know.” He flattened his hair back where it was sticking to his sweaty face. “I’m fine. I am.”

Dean nodded, eyes fixed on Sam’s face, and whatever he saw there seemed to assuage his concern somewhat. He let go of Sam’s shoulder, easing off, giving him breathing space.

“I just—can’t believe he’s here, you know? That he’s real this time.”

“Yeah, well, he’s the one who should be afraid.” There was a familiar bravado in Dean’s voice that gave Sam almost as much hope as reservation. He’d heard that tone in his brother’s voice before, and as much he appreciated Dean’s renewed resolve, they’d seen stronger plans than this one implode in on themselves. And this whole thing—this hope of fighting back, of using _Lucifer_ of all people—was hardly the most foolproof idea they’d ever had. “You already beat him once.”

“Did I?” Sam tried for another laugh, but it came out as a huff of disbelief. He supposed it was true; even Lucifer had admitted that Sam had beat him, but this victory had confined itself to the mere seconds it had taken to fling himself backward into that hole in the earth. After that, Lucifer had been the victor, and Sam had been no match at all for the full force and fury of the devil.

“You’re damn right you did,” said Dean, but as many times as he had fished bullets from Sam’s body, popped dislocated shoulders back into place, bound wounds closed with stitches—there were broken parts of Sam that went deeper than Dean could suss out and sew up. Dean would never know what it was to succumb completely to someone else in body, mind, and soul, or what sort of hollowness that left behind. Maybe this post-Mark version of his brother would understand better than before what it meant to have your self-control wrenched from you, your body made slave to someone else’s will, but Dean had never had his meat suit joyridden by a demon or an angel or by Lucifer himself. Dean had never known the violation of sharing your skin with someone else.

That ashy filth of the room had settled under his skin, and it made Sam want to claw his skin from muscle and bone. He felt shaken and jittery, awake and exhausted all at once. He almost wished he could dredge up a healthy anger to thrive off of for a while—anger at Lucifer, or God, or even anger at Cas, for undoing his sacrifice, for rendering every second of his agony meaningless—but he couldn’t even muster this, because he knew what having Lucifer inside him must have been doing to Cas. Because he had paid the same price once, for the same reasons. And as for God—hadn’t Sam himself run away once, when someone needed him, because he’d been too broken to fix anything or anyone?

 “He needs to be here.” When Sam spoke, his voice was level. “I get that. Better he’s here where we can all keep an eye on him than out doing God knows what. Especially when Cas is—”

“We’ll get him back.” Maybe Dean felt as sure as he sounded, maybe he didn’t, but Sam appreciated the firm resolve all the same. He wasn’t sure he could muster enough faith for the both of them at the moment. “And we’ll throw Lucifer’s ass back in the cage where it belongs. But until then, when’s the last time you slept?”

For days, Sam had claimed Chuck—God’s—nightly musical performances as the reason for his sleepless nights. He didn’t bother now, though, knew Dean would see right through it, so he shrugged.

“Alright. Let’s get you to bed.”

“Come on, mom, it’s not even my bedtime.”

“Yeah, yeah. Humor me, will you?”

Sam let himself be steered toward the bed, but when they reached it, he stopped cold. The covers were slightly disturbed, ruffled near the head. The idea of lying down here, letting his skin touch the same places Lucifer had touched, wrapping himself up in these blankets like a second skin, was too much.

 “I can’t.”

Whether Dean saw the disturbed covers or just heard the disgust in Sam’s voice, he seemed to get it. “Down the hall, then. In one of the spares.”  

Dean led the way down the hall to one of the extra rooms they never used except for storage. This room was colder, empty without the spare personal touches of their own bedrooms. But the cold, unslept-in look about the bed was exactly what Sam wanted. Except . . .

He could not— _would_ not—bring himself to ask. Sam didn’t consider himself a particularly ego-prone person, but he had too much pride, even in the face of his own fear, to stoop quite that low.

Still—the idea of Dean walking away and leaving him in this room alone, of lying down on this bed with his eyes closed, his defenses down, with Lucifer still roaming the halls, did not appeal to him in the slightest.

“Hey.”

Dean turned from the doorway. “What’s up?”

Sam crossed the room and opened the top drawer of a faded wooden dresser that had been pushed into the corner. “Our funds have been getting low. We’ll probably need to hit a bar soon—hustle some pool or some cards or something.”

“Yeah?”

Sam held up a pack of playing cards. “Don’t want to get rusty.”

There was a moment, just a beat, where understanding passed between them. Dean, to his credit, just nodded, taking a step forward into the room. It wasn’t much of a long-term solution—hell, it wasn’t much of a solution at all—but it gave Sam something to hold onto here and now and staved off the moment where he’d have to plunge back into the murky shadows of his own mind. This, at least, gave him something to build from. Stone number one.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first posted fic in about three years, and my first Supernatural fic ever, so thanks for reading! Season 11 was great, but Sam's inevitable difficulty with having Lucifer around again was never really addressed, so I felt compelled to explore it a bit here. Any comments or constructive crit would be greatly appreciated!


End file.
